GREGOR telescope: Zooming in on the sun

Thursday, May 10, 2012 - 07:01 in Astronomy & Space

(Phys.org) -- Nighttime is the astronomer’s day. After all, anyone wishing to see the stars must wait until it is dark. There is one exception to this rule, however: the sun. Close up, it can be used to study not only the properties of a typical star, but also its relationship with the planets. Observing eruptions of matter, sunspots or even the solar magnetic field in detail requires telescopes with a large aperture, such as Gregor, which will be inaugurated in Tenerife in the coming days. With a mirror diameter of 1.5 metres, the telescope will be able to show structures on the sun on spatial scales as small as 70 kilometres, making it one of the three most powerful instruments in the world.

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